Chapter 24
“When this is over, what do you want to do?”
Peggy had honestly not thought hard about the answer to that question.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, wrapping her fingers around the cup of hot water with the tea bag stuck unceremoniously in it, the closest approximation she could get to a cuppa in the wilds of Bohemia. “I suppose I’ve been too busy trying to survive to see the end of the war.”
Steve sat across from her, pensive in the dim glow of the fire, leaning against the log he had pulled up for a bench, but he had foregone it to simply sit on the half-frozen ground, long legs stretched out towards the heat. She remembered not so long ago when he was so slight the bitterness of late November would have cut through him like a knife.
“What about you?” She sipped at the tepid concoction. “The world is your oyster now. When this is all done, you can do anything.”
“Pity it took me having to go through a science experiment to get that, huh?” His lopsided smile was half self-deprecating, half sad commentary on his life before Abraham Erskine found him. “If I hadn’t stumbled into that recruitment office at Stark’s big expo, I’d still be the little guy getting beat up in every back alley in Brooklyn.”
“True,” she replied, matter-of-factly. “But if my brother hadn’t died, I’d have been Mrs. Fred Wells by now, and we wouldn’t be here talking to each other. All of us have something else we were supposed to be. What are we going to do now?”
“Ahhh, well, that.” He had his cup of something hot, some of Dugan’s brew, disgusting but warm. “Before the war, I wanted to go into art design, maybe become a real artist, maybe go into the ad industry. I was good at it.”
“I’ve seen your work.” She nodded to the pocket she knew he kept his notebook in. “You are talented. You could go far with that.”
“Sure, but is it all that I could be doing?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged broad shoulders, bashfully staring into the slowly lowering flames. “I don’t know, I suppose that I’ve been thinking a lot about Erskine lately, the serum, that last conversation we had together. Of all the recruits he could have given that serum to, he gave it to me, this scrawny kid who had spent most of his life in one fight or another, because I couldn’t learn to keep my mouth shut or walk away. I can’t just... when I see something unfair, I have a hard time just letting it happen. I don’t do that, and back then, if I said something or spoke up, I’d get beat up for it. Now, I’m in a position where I can make a real difference, really take a stand, and be taken seriously. I don’t just mean physically, but you know, I have a voice that people will listen to as well. Maybe I should do something with it. I don’t know, maybe when this is all over, when the army doesn’t need me anymore, I could do something else...advocate for anything else.”
Why that caught Peggy by surprise, she didn’t know. “Fight for the little guy?”
“Yeah,” he smiled, the same, lop-sided grin. “I don’t know what that will look like, but...someone has to do it, right?”
“Sure,” she affirmed, as somewhere in the distance a beeping noise sounded, faint in the distant woods, reverberating through the tall stands of ancient trees. Steve’s endearing smile pulled and changed, fading as Peggy opened her eyes to the sound of the alarm clock by her bed and the comfort of the high-rise flat looking over New York in 2010 and not the cold of autumn in 1944. Her hand reached over to slap the offending noisemaker, finding the alarm button, groaning as she shifted in the pile of pillows, staring up at the ceiling. Steve’s smile, the warm, rumbling timbre of his baritone voice, the determination, the hopefulness...God, that had been so real. Real enough, her heart ached as tears prickled, the memory of long ago so familiar she could almost imagine she had just been there.
She turned to the alarm clock, glowing red in the dim light, and the framed photo that she kept there. Steve was the scrawny man who kept getting into those fights, standing up to bullies, and defending what he believed. She smiled, mistily, reaching for it, with the memory so fresh at hand.
“Happy birthday, darling.” She brushed a finger along the glass, sadly. Today was America’s Independence Day, one that, as a proper British woman, she perhaps felt somewhat conflicted over. She had dual citizenship now, thanks to one Maria Hill, but even if it wasn’t, it was special in that it was Steve’s day. He would have been 92 today had he not flown into the Arctic Ocean. She tried to surmise how old he would be when they woke him up. Twenty-seven? The idea that she would technically be older than he was both boggled and amused her, but she supposed it made little difference. That he wasn’t there yet bothered her more than she wanted to think about.
Setting his picture back in its most cherished place, she threw back the bedcovers and rose, looking towards her morning routine. Even though this place lacked the coziness of her old flat in 1949, she had developed a routine and comfort in this new space with all of its luxury. She admitted to enjoying the shower perhaps a bit too much and took her time ruminating on both her day and her life thus far in the new world she had stepped into. The whirlwind of it all often left Peggy with little time and less means to breathe, to take it in, to consider where she was at and what everything had become. Since she had taken Scott Lang’s hand and stepped through the looking glass, she had been dragged between pillar and post, from one moment to the next, without really thinking through where she was and how she ended up here. First, it was the end of the world, then it was the Avengers, then a missing Tony Stark, with Peggy running as fast as she could to even keep ahead of it. Much like she had during the war, she hadn’t stopped to think beyond just surviving, making it to the next moment, and had given no thought really to the future, to what came next. She’d given about as much thought to the past and what she left behind.
Scott Lang had been one of those elements she had dropped, a thread that had become lost in the whirl of her life when she landed in 2010, confused and disoriented. He had yet to appear in this time, and for several weeks after, Peggy worried what had happened to him. Her search for him had been stymied in that he existed here and now, but she didn’t think the man she found in the SHIELD database was the same one who had appeared in an alley looking for her and had eaten his body weight in pie while telling her she was needed in the future. This one was working for a company known as Vistacorp, a security systems company that SHIELD was fairly certain was bilking their customers, and they had on a watch list. He was happily married, had a toddler daughter, and seemed rather oblivious to everything. Whoever he was now, he wasn’t the man who had come to find her. More than that, the Hank Pym he had referenced was a reclusive scientist who lived in San Francisco, rarely spoke to anyone, even his board members, and relegated much of the day-to-day work of his company to his daughter, Hope, and a member of his company named Darren Cross. Neither of them seemed any more aware than Lang did, and Peggy had left that thread alone. If the future Lang reappeared, presumably on January 1, 2012, she would perhaps be able to find him then. She hoped he would be safe and sound. Like so many other pieces, Peggy felt vaguely like she had left him hanging, unable to make it right, unsure what she could even do to make it better.
That thought brought to mind her nephew, depressingly, and the unresolved feelings between herself and Sharon’s father. She had mentioned very little of it to her niece, who had caught on that there was something that had not gone well on their one family gathering. Peggy had said only that it would take time, and she guessed from Sharon’s frustration that Harry was even less forthcoming about it. Despite his sister Maggie’s efforts to reach out to her, Harry had remained silent. Not wishing to further any animosity or hurt, Peggy had gracefully given her excuses to Sharon when asked about the long 4th of July weekend, creating reasons for busying herself with work and not feeling she could step away. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but had Sharon wished to push it, she could have torn through the flimsiest of excuses. Peggy contented herself with the fact that Sharon, at least, was still eager to be in her life, as were her siblings and Maggie. Perhaps from there, she could build inroads...not that Peggy was ever particularly good with those and her own family.
She was nearly a prune by the time she finished meandering down the path her musings led her down. The bathroom was so steamed it was more a sauna than a proper bath. She aired it out as she toweled off, wrapping in a fuzzy robe, a gift from Juan and Jose for her birthday, and put up her hair in a turban to dry. One joy of the modern world, and the modern hairstyle, was it took half the work her old one did. Satisfied, she puttered out of her master bath and down the hallway to the flat beyond to rummage in her kitchen for sustenance. Despite all of the fancy cooking channels she had discovered with Sharon, she had not progressed much past making a sandwich and occasionally eating oatmeal. Frozen food had been a lifesaver, however, and now that she could use a microwave, she felt safe in attempting the process without setting her entire kitchen on fire. This morning, she opted for cold cereal and tea, something of a luxury, she admitted, to her still very 1940s palette.
Peggy had just managed to put the kettle on for tea and pour some wheat biscuits into a bowl when the phone on its charger buzzed briefly at her. She ignored it as she finished the rituals of tea and cereal, settling at the kitchen island to partake before reaching for the blasted thing. She had found to her mild disgust that despite the scant months possessing one, she was as addicted to it as any other modern person was. She had it up to her ear as she swallowed in a decidedly unladylike manner. “Carter speaking.”
“You should learn to check your caller ID before answering a phone. it’s a nifty feature we have on these things.”
Peggy didn’t need to check it to know who it was. “Force of habit, Director Fury. Would the number on the front even have been yours?”
He chuckled. “You know it wouldn’t. I’m surprised you haven’t figured out how to install tracers in it yet.”
“Who says I haven’t?” She made a mental note to have Agent Burk do just that. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was in town, enjoying the holiday, and thought you might like to meet me up for a hot dog and a bit of company. Prospect Park is having a community concert and barbecue. You should come.”
Prospect Park was in Brooklyn. Peggy felt her mouth go dry. “I am being supremely lazy this morning. What time?”
She knew he knew better. “Say six o’clock? I think there is an old friend of yours you’d like to see.”
“See you then!” Her heart thumped painfully in her chest as she tried to suss out what he meant by “old friend.” Had he found signs of the Valkyrie? She hadn’t even heard they were manning an expedition. Would it be that easy? Desperate hope and longing hit her all at once as she stared at the digital clock on the stovetop range saying it was only 9 am. This would be a rather long day.
Any hope of a plan for being productive failed miserably with everything she picked up. The work on setting up a team for the Avengers - when they formed them - sat on her computer, untouched, unable to focus on any of them. She flipped through the television in the hopes of finding something mindless, a habit she didn’t normally partake of, but found herself doing out of restlessness. She picked up magazines and books, worked out for an hour in the very fine athletic facilities SHIELD had installed for their employees in this building, and finally decided instead to just go early and perhaps find something to occupy her time until her designated meeting time.
She dressed carefully, unsure why Fury wanted a meeting in such a public space and aware both of the sticky humidity outside and the need not to draw attention to herself. Had this been 1948 she would have perhaps laughingly given into the holiday, dressing in something red white, and blue and mulishly insisting that they were Britain’s colors before America’s. Instead, she decided to wear a dark, navy blue top, something that conveyed the spirit without drawing attention to herself. The white capris and simple athletic shoes were an outfit so nondescript as to be boring. With the extra time, she decided to take the long journey via subway out to Brooklyn, blending in with the other revelers making their way across the East River to events, quietly watching the varied and colorful people she saw on the subway; the man who had to work that day, trying to nap, the young woman in a sundress reading a book the teenager with his strange, braided hair and skateboard in a patriotic vest, his ears covered by giant headphones playing the rhythmic music Sharon had labeled “hip hop.” All the while she tried to swallow her nerves and energy, watching the train platforms as they raced by the window.
It only occurred to her on the bridge across the river into the city that Peggy hadn’t once been back to Brooklyn in her whole time in the future. They passed very near the spot on the Brooklyn Bridge where she stood, tipping out the vile of blood they took from Steve so long ago, watching as it spilled red into the swirling river and out into the Atlantic Ocean. Even when she had still been in the 1940’s she hadn’t gone back to the city. She had few reasons to. Barnes had family there, yes, but they didn’t know Peggy, hadn’t known her relationship either to their son or his best friend and she hadn’t wanted to intrude upon their grief at the double loss of both Bucky and Steve. Peggy ended up staying away on the whole, finding too much grief there to give her a good enough reason to go back.
So it was with quite a bit of shock that she took in the booming high rises and updated, modern city Brooklyn had become. Certainly, the red-brick buildings that had characterized the place Steve and Bucky had called home still had a place here, as did the people, the varieties of immigrants and languages heard, just as it had been in their time. But there was a decidedly more modern cast to it, young, artistic, easygoing people who all reminded her of Juan and Julio, who spoke the language of organic foods and responsibly sourced clothing, small coffee shops, and artist galleries. Even the strip of buildings and the old warehouse that had once housed the SSR research facility Erskine and Howard had worked in was now a glass-encased building with shops, offices, and apartments. Peggy wondered what she’d find if she dared to try and look for Steve and Bucky’s old apartment and if it was still there, the home to some other group of young people struggling to get by.
As the sun began to shift towards the far side of Manhattan, Peggy began making her way over to Prospect Park. It wasn’t a small space, but it did have signs up for viewing areas for a concert, and it felt that would likely be the best place to start her search. One of them would find the other. She followed the streams of people wandering over, young people, families with small children, of as many races and languages, enjoying a night of music and fireworks. Even she felt herself swept up in a little bit, smiling at a small girl in a frilly red and blue dress, little flags painted on her chubby, warm brown cheeks, playing with a balloon as she danced in time time the live band playing on the stage beyond.
Peggy hadn’t expected to see Fury immediately. He was a spy and spies knew better. Still, she scanned the crowd, looking for something, the hint of a tall, black man in a ball cap perhaps? She wasn’t sure. Seeing nothing, she decided instead to spread the small throw she brought with her out on the grass, her phone out as she kept an eye on the people wandering past her. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Finally, it pinged with a message saying to meet her on the east side of the arena, by a statue she might recognize. Gamely, Peggy gathered her blanket, tucked it inside her bag, and wandered off to find her modern-day counterpart.
Fury wasn’t wrong, she did recognize the statue.
She almost stopped dead when she realized who it was, half shocked, half appalled. The likeness was certainly heroic, Captain America in his uniform, shield high above him as he stood, one leg planted before him, the other up on some rise as if he were swatting away some sort of giant fly or preparing to smash something over the head. Made of bronze, it looked like something ridiculous from one of his comic books and nothing like the way Steve fought in the field at all.
“I thought you’d get a kick out of that.” Unsurprisingly, Fury snuck up on her once again. She turned to glare at him pointedly as he shrugged, holding up a hot dog in silent tribute. “I brought food!”
“So you did,” she replied with a dry but grateful smile. She took the proffered hot dog gently from him, eyeing his ubiquitous uniform of dark slacks and a dark t-shirt underneath a dark baseball cap. “You don’t stand out much in a crowd dressed like that.”
“Good, means it’s working.” He jerked his head towards a bench on the far side of the statue where they could sit, on the outside of the gathered crowds. He settled, reaching into the utility pockets on the side of one long leg to pull out two bottled waters, handing her one, along with a wad of napkins. “Figured you’d want some.”
‘Thank you,” she murmured, accepting both and setting them beside her as she contemplated the sausage in hand. She wouldn’t deny she did have a particular fondness for New York-style hot dogs, especially in summer, made in the little stands dotted all over the city. It was the sort of thing that was so cliche it had become classic about the city. She bit into it carefully, covered in mustard and onions, trying to do so in a way that she didn’t manage to get it all over herself and her slacks.
“This is the taste of summer for me,” Fury hummed, having already tucked into his own. “Fourth of July, hot dog in hand, waiting for fireworks.”
“You make it sound idyllic,” Peggy observed around a mouthful. “I’m guessing then your childhood was a pleasant one?”
He knew what she was about and smiled. “Pretty much, all things considered. It was Alabama in the 1960s, not precisely a peaceful time if you were black in America, but my parents did their best.”
That was one thing, then, that Peggy now knew about him. “You were born after I disappeared.”
“Not long after, yeah. Today’s my birthday.”
What were the odds of that? “Really? Happy birthday!”
“Thank you,” he chuckled, finishing his hot dog and wiping discreetly at his mouth. “Always hated it as a kid because it was never just about me. All the other kids got to have birthdays to themselves and I had to share it with the country.”
“Steve said the same thing.” She glanced at the ridiculous statue with a hint of fondness. “Today is his birthday as well.”
“I know,” Fury acknowledged, crumpling his napkin in his long fingers. “You know, I always looked up to him when I was a kid.”
That caught her by surprise. “Did you?”
“Mmm, yeah. He always did what was right, no matter how hard it was. You know, all my military career, I thought it was hard being a good soldier, especially being a good, black soldier. But it’s a hell of a lot harder to be a good man in this world. He somehow figured that out.”
“It was who he was...is…” She had to believe that he was still that if they found him. “Steve always wanted to do what was right, even if it would have been smarter for him not to.”
“Which is why the world needs him.” Fury beside her pulled out his phone, tapping it quietly. “We haven’t found him yet, but I finally got permission to begin the search.”
“The director of SHIELD needed permission to run an operation in his agency?”
“He does if he doesn’t want a political standoff with the World Security Council.” Fury didn’t sound thrilled with it. “The fact is Cap's place is lost and we aren’t sure if it’s in international waters or in those belonging to Canada or Greenland. That took a minute to negotiate, especially because we can’t tell them why we are interested either.”
It clicked with Peggy why. “They are worried you are spying?”
“We are a spy agency, you have to give them some credit. Anyway, word has been put out and we have fishing and merchant ships on the ground looking.” He highlighted a map on his screen of a huge area, the islands of North America in the Arctic Circle. “Best case scenario, he’s easy to find. Worst case, we have to start sending research teams up there with equipment to start looking through the ice. Given the fact that weather patterns and global warming are already making life up there difficult, our scientists don’t think that’s a good idea and I’m inclined to agree, so that’s a last resort.”
Peggy couldn’t help the thrill of the first small glimmer of hope she’d had in years, since the horrible day in 1945, sitting in that radio room in Schmidt’s Austrian fortress, helpless as she and Steve discussed a dance that would never happen. “But you’ll find him? You’ll bring him home?”
“Yes,” Fury rumbled, simply. “Mind you, we don’t know what condition he’s in yet. It may not be as simple as thawing him out and waking him up. I’ve got a team pouring through Erskine’s notes now. They may reach out to you eventually. You’re the last person alive who knew his work and just how it affected Rogers.”
“Not so much, I’m afraid. Howard was much more into that than I was, he had the better idea of the exact science.”
“Would you know enough if you had access to Howard’s notes you could offer insight?”
“Possibly, if I could understand Howard’s notes.” It occurred to her what that meant. “You have those and not Tony?”
“I’m sure Coulson’s told you by now that Howard didn’t exactly inform his son about his history working with SHIELD.”
“He did, but not why.” That mystery lingered, the truth behind why Howard would keep his son in the dark about what he was up to.
Fury didn’t seem to know much more himself. “Stark became more and more careful in his later years. A combination of things, really, from what I gathered. SHIELD was transitioning at the time, moving down to DC and coming under the control of the World Security Council, shifting its leadership to one that was more closely aligned with international governments. Add on top of that the end of the Cold War looming and what that meant for the international community and his research projects, of which I know of at least four going on at the time, he was, to put it bluntly overworked. He’d gone through a rough patch there for a while. I didn’t know him then, but I heard it involved alcohol. He and Maria had a hard time when Tony was young. All that pooled together and I think that things like being honest with your kid about what daddy does at the office may have just slipped by. Maybe he didn’t want to tell Tony. Maybe he wanted his kid to grow up being something his father wasn’t.”
Peggy considered the man she met, with his sad charisma barely covering the frightened and tired man underneath it all. “That didn’t particularly work out for him.”
“No, I guess it didn’t.” Fury cracked open the bottle of water he had kept for himself, pulling from it slowly. “The son has always been a bit too much like the father.”
“At least until now.”
“You mean his whole new resolution with Stark Industries?”
“That, yes. For every one good weapon Howard made, he also made a hundred bad weapons, ones that hurt people in ways he never intended. Most of them he tried to keep out of the public hands, but that didn’t mean he stopped himself from making them. In a million years I couldn’t imagine Howard deciding one day that he’d simply stop production on the one thing that his company was built on out of his sense of guilt over what his products had done.”
Fury swallowed before answering. “That wasn’t Howard’s style at all, no. Makes you wonder why Stark did it.”
Peggy realized she wasn’t the only one fishing. “You agree with Coulson?”
“I like to keep my options open. What do you think happened?”
“I think that someone thought they were clever.” She watched in the distance as a pair of teenagers floated a piece of plastic back and forth, not unlike how Steve would toss his shield. “I think someone at Stark Industries was trying to make a buck under the table, maybe because they needed it, maybe because they deserved it, most definitely because they thought they could get away with it. Perhaps they had ties to the black market, perhaps those ties reached out to them, but whatever the case they decided to go behind Stark’s back. Maybe it was a good thing for a while, until either they were noticed or they feared they were and decided to remove him before he could find it.”
“If that was the case, that’s a piss poor way of doing it.” Fury snorted dismissively, stretching his legs out as she slouched on the bench, watching the same two teenagers. “Not only was Stark not removed but now he knows someone did it and he’s cutting off the source.”
“Or at least trying to.” Peggy had kept a tab on the financial news, as much for the Stark case as for her interests in terms of Stark Industries stock. “The board is in a tizzy, there are those who are saying he’s unfit to be CEO at this time.”
“Saw that. Funny how whenever a man says he has a brilliant new weapon to blow people off the face of the earth, he’s a genius, but when he says he wants to do something to bring peace and save lives he’s crazy.”
“Fear tends to always outrun sensibility,” Peggy muttered, remembering even the fears of her childhood and the specter of two wars that had framed it. “The problem is that he may well get cut out on any corporate decision and the situation will be a moot point.”
Pulling from his water once again, Fury sighed. “You know, towards the end of his life, Howard kept talking about how what the world needed wasn’t bigger guns or smarter bombs. We needed people, good people, ones who had the strength of will and character to keep the world safe, who could be the guardians for us so we didn’t need to build planes and weapons of mass destruction. Of course, he got laughed at for the idea, because where do you find those sort of people who are so good, so perfect, so free from a government agenda, and still strong enough to manage that sort of feet.”
“You’re Avengers?” Peggy now began to connect the thread.
Fury shrugged. “Not going to lie, I was one of the few people who didn’t think his idea was stupid. After talking to some other people, having some conversations about the state of the world, and seeing that there were good people out there who could do it, I thought we might as well give it a shot. What the hell was it going to hurt us?”
“I asked Hill for a department.” Peggy figured she might as well inform him of that much, though she suspected he already knew. “If you want this off the ground, you need to have it organized. You can’t just have it as a slap-dash tactical team you call when you feel like it. To justify this and the potential expense you have to have logic and reason behind it with clear objectives as to what its purpose and outcomes are.”
“Which is why I asked you to take this up.” He crossed his arms over his chest, pleased with himself. “Between you and me, no one else in this agency takes me seriously about this.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she shot back a tad acerbically. “So far all I have are spreadsheets of data and a rather terrifying catalog of people who have skills but with no rhyme or reason. What did you want out of this?”
“Heroes,” he replied, simply, as if that was the answer.
“It's a pity they don’t have those readily for sale down at the market.”
He only laughed at her tart reply, nodding at the statue in front of them. “I don’t know, you always had a good knack at finding them.”
She stared up at the artist’s rendition of Steve’s face, the firm, almost grimacing defiance on it. “I didn’t find him, Erskine did.”
“And who was it that helped him sneak out of that camp in Italy and then talked Howard into flying his plane into Austria to drop him off?”
“Ahh, well, that.” She did shoot him a bit of a cheeky smile. “I believed in him when few people didn’t.’
“That’s my point.” Fury turned his one good eye towards her sharply. “This is a crazy idea. You know it, I know it. Not even my most trusted people believe it completely and Coulson would sell his soul for a chance to meet Steve Rogers. No one is willing to believe that any one person, let alone a group of heroes, can protect us or that they are even needed. But you did. You listened to a crackpot story from a perfect stranger and somehow jumped through time just to save the world. You’re one of those heroes. You believe in Steve Rogers, he’s one of those heroes. And I got to believe there are more of them out there in the world to face what’s coming and that you know how to find them.”
Peggy met his singular gaze for long moments, unsure if she was worthy of that task. “You are a hopeless romantic, Nicholas.”
He grimaced at the use of his first name. “Let’s just say I know the difference heroes, real heroes, can make.”
“And what if Stark is one of the ones I want?” She may as well address the elephant in the park. “Lang made it clear he was a member of the Avengers, he is the one who bucks heads with Steve.”
“Somehow, him potentially bucking heads with Rogers doesn’t shock me. He’s used to maintaining his authority and playing by his own rules. Sort of makes you wonder what he’s up to out there in LA, hiding out in his mansion, not talking to anyone, and having Stane run the show.”
Frankly, Tony having Stane run the show wasn’t a shock, that had been his modus operandi for years. But Fury did hit on something. When she even mentioned Tony in the beginning, his participation in the Avengers, Fury had been dubious. A playboy into his race cars, he said, not a hero. But that had been before Afghanistan before he had been captured, before he broke himself out...and he had broken himself out.
“Stark created something in that cave,” Peggy muttered, more spitballing, thinking out loud. “We saw images of it, Agent Burk found it. At the time I thought it could have been his ticket out. Howard had tried to create rocket packs back during the war, something to have soldiers use, but nothing definitive ever came out of it. It was far too dangerous.”
Fury followed her reasoning, his one good eye curious. “You think he figured out a workaround?”
Peggy shrugged, thinking. “Maybe not a perfect one, at least not at first. Whatever he created only got him so far and then failed before he crash-landed in the desert. But if Tony is anything like Howard, he’s an iterist, as most engineers are, and he won’t be satisfied with something one and done. He’ll want to improve it, to make it better. What if that is what he’s up to, working on improving his initial effort from Afghanistan?”
“Which means that Tony Stark could have another insane creation up his sleeve.”
“And he’s how you get your Avengers.” The pieces slid into place for Peggy. “He was raised to build weapons, but he’s shut down all manufacturing in his plants. My guess, is he no longer trusts anyone with his tech, save himself. He’s seen what others do with it, he has seen when others allow it to fall into the wrong hands, and he doesn’t trust anyone but himself with it. What if he decides the only one who can use it is him?”
Fury didn’t find that any more comforting than the idea that Stark could be trading in weapons at all. “And you don’t find that frightening in the least bit?”
“I mean...it could be frightening, yes, but I don’t think it is.” Not judging from the man she saw in Los Angeles, the broken, tired, hurt man. “No, I think for once in his life Tony Stark saw just what the true human cost of his wealth and ambition was and it hurt him, seriously affected him. I don’t know about you, but if I were in that position, I’d want to have a means to protect myself and others, a way to keep everyone safe.”
Fury didn’t look convinced. “Or a means to destroy my enemies and control the world.”
Peggy would have laughed at him and his skepticism but instead chose to only snort, dryly. “If Stark can’t manage his own company himself, he isn’t going to control the world. Besides, I think he’s a much better person than people give him credit for.”
“Why, because he’s Howard’s son?”
“Because Howard was a better person than he gave himself credit for, too.” Peggy had always believed that. Despite his many faults, Howard tried to do what was right, even if he failed in the attempt. “He wanted to do what was right and I see that in Tony as well. And if this is what he’s up to, if this is what he’s developed, that is a piece of the Avengers, a big piece. A supersoldier who is one of the best tactical strategists and a genius who understands not just how to make a bigger gun but has the compassion to know sometimes it’s better not to use it. Now...we just need to find the rest.”
Fury nodded, chuckling. “Man, hearing it from you makes us both sound crazy for thinking this is a good idea.”
“Who says we aren’t?” Peggy shrugged, watching the teeming crowd beyond. Lang had said there would be a threat, and an alien threat, to the Earth...to New York specifically. “Do we have a plan in place for New York City in the event of an attack from the outside?”
“Do you mean terrorists?” His nonchalant tone meant that yes, they at least had a plan for that.
“Not exactly,” she shrugged. Thankfully he seemed to infer her meaning.
“Do you believe we need one?”
“Yes,” she sighed, remembering Lang’s offhanded comments. “I very much think he will need one.”
“I’ll see what I can draw up. In the meantime, I guess you will have to figure out just what Stark is doing in his mansion and if it has to do with some sort of rocket pack.”
“You say it like that and it sounds silly,” Peggy teased, turning Fury’s earlier words on him. She considered, looking around them, the crowds of people, the statue of Steve, the excitement of a summer evening on a holiday. “Why did you call me out here? Why didn’t you just call me in the office?”
“Fewer eyes and ears,” he shot back, promptly, which was likely more true than not. “And besides, I thought it would be worth considering, once again, what it was we were all fighting for.”
“A rank sentimentalist,” Peggy muttered, not in the least disagreeing with him.
“A good spy knows how to apply psychological means when necessary,” he shrugged, unapologetic. “Besides, I wanted a hotdog and fireworks. It’s my birthday.”
Perhaps there was a hint of truth in that as well.